August 12, 2013 - 4:38pm
My first bread competition
It's all baked, cooled & bagged. Now off to the Lake County Fair to enter my first ever bread competition. My sampling includes French bread (EPI style), Italian herb sourdough no-knead bread, English muffins, Olive oil Italian bread and Honey whole wheat bread. Wish me luck!
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Your breads look really nice - especially the Olive Oil Italian Bread.
Good luck,
Karin
Nicely scored and great looking crust.
Very nice, Joe. Good luck!
It's interesting that the Italian bread stood out. it's the one I make the most, as it's the one we like the best. I also make the English muffins frequently for breakfast sandwiches. thanks for the well wishes.
Wow, what eye-popping breads! Let us know what wins. I imagine they all will. I enjoyed entering our OC fair the last couple of years. Good luck.
The bread looks good enough for plenty of ribbons.
Happy baking
And the judges said...
Epi style French baguettes.
Olive Oil Italian Bread. Sold at the auction for $11
Honey Whole Wheat bread. Sold at the auction for $20. WOW!!
Italian Herb Sourdough No-Knead bread. Sold at the auction for $10
English Muffins (6). Sold at the auction for $5
Congratulations on your success, nice lookin loaves.
Beautiful work as usual. Obviously they taste terrific also!
FF
goes the money! We done Joe! Nice to see another Fresh Loafian doing so well at the county fair bread competition. You make us all proud!
from the auction is for maintenance & improvements to the Agriculture/Grange Building fund. But I did get back $18 of my $20 exhibitor fee for the ribbons. They paid $4 for each first place and $2 for the third place, plus I received 6 admission passes as an exhibitor. Frequent Flyer, flavor was 35% of the score. All of my breads have excellent flavor because I'm constantly tweaking my bread formulas. The dough for the French baguettes was made 36 hours ahead of baking, and cold proofed in the fridge for most of that time to extract the sugar from the flour. I used Bob's Red Mill unbleached white bread flour for all of the breads except the English muffins, which used unbleached Gold Medal All Purpose flour so they wouldn't get tough. The stone ground whole wheat is a ConAgra flour that I buy in bulk from an Amish store nearby, and the sourdough starter is 5 years old. I refreshed it for four days before using it, so it would be at its peak of vibrancy.
One of the neat things about bread baking is that you're constantly learning new techniques to improve an already simple and delicious food.